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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

After much hard work by the boy painting all the miniatures, and my drilling and gluing over 90 magnets...the game is ready to be run. Just waiting on some items in the mail that hopefully I can attack tonight (flags for turn order and frenzy markers).

Saturday, July 18, 2015

~ Not going to recreate the wheel - if you are interested in what games we are running and how many tickets may still be available, check out this link. Many of our events are sold out, others have a few tickets remaining. We do run some very small press games, so tickets are still available for games you might want to take a chance on like Peryton Publishing's RED BAT and QALIDAR.

We have 2 Tunnels & Trolls events this year - both are sold out. Kopfy is running a Stay Alive! game on Thursday morning and a T&T Fantasy game on Saturday afternoon. Show up with generics and he may be able to get you in.

This year, the boy and I will be running 2 games of Circus Imperium together with out homemade track and painted miniatures. One is sold out and the other has a few tickets left if you want to check it out for some hover craft chariot racing with a streak of unbridled violence.

We also have other games like Arkham Horror, Cards Against Humanity, and other role playing games. Again - check out the link at the top of the page to see our complete listings.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

The Kickstarter campaign culminated almost 2.5 years ago promising a new and improved, nay, "Deluxe" edition of Tunnels & Trolls. The wait is over as the PDF version of the rules has been released. It looks very nice and coming in at close to 400 pages, it is jammed with content. The issue will be in the coming weeks as I digest it will be how much influence those that are not Ken St. Andre had on the final version. I am hoping that the many things that make the game so appealing are not changed too drastically, but then again, I will simply play the game the way I want to anyway.

But the reality is that long time supporters/players of T&T are few and far between in numbers compared to D&D. The Kickstarter campaign brought in over 1600 backers. I would wager that most of these have little or no experience with the system. My conversion to the game has been ongoing; I still play both D&D (2E) and T&T regularly. Links to my previous posts for those that are new to the game can be found below. Most of these I had written about 4 years ago...for those of you that are coming from the D&D world, these may be of some use to you.

But, the real purpose of this post is to propose some ways that you as a D&D convert can make the jump to the world of T&T. One thing that I really had some issues with was with monsters and the MR rating used in the system. So I am taking the common Troll from 2E and converting it to my T&T game...a link to the terms below can be found here.

Artwork copyright William McAusland, used with permission

Using the statistics of a standard troll from TOG 2E, I would start with the HD (6+6) which I would maximize for hit points to 54 (8*6 +6). So at MR 54, the Attack Dice for a monster is determined from the MR value (50 - 59 would be 6d6). The combat adds are equal to half the MR value.

MR: 54

Combat Dice: 6d6 + 27

With an AC of 4, it is safe to assume that a Troll does not typically wear armor. Since AC in TOG is also a reflection of reaction time or DEX bonuses to defense, deriving an Armor value for a monster that reflects it hide or natural defense will be a bit arbitrary. I am going to simply decide that a standard troll has a natural hide that can absorb 4 hits per combat turn.

Armor: Troll Hide (4 hits)

Regarding special abilities and 'what makes a troll a troll', a typical one has regeneration, is typically regarded as being quite strong, would normally attack with a Claw/Claw/Bite retinue in TOG, and have 90' Infravision. Also of note, fire and acid is what would stop the troll's regeneration ability.

Finally, I like to set an 'Alpha' rating, or a more powerful version of the creature if needed or desired. The 2E description of a troll states that females are bit larger and more powerful than its male counterparts.

Alpha?:Yes - Female: 72 MR (8d6 + 36)

Is any of this a definitive way to convert TOG monsters to T&T? Probably not, but hopefully it serves as a good example of how it could be done.